An Outline of the Grammar of the Safaitic Inscriptions

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BRILL, Mar 20, 2015 - Language Arts & Disciplines - 384 pages
This volume contains a detailed grammatical description of the dialects of Old Arabic attested in the Safaitic script, an Ancient North Arabian alphabet used mainly in the deserts of southern Syria and north-eastern Jordan in the pre-Islamic period. It is the first complete grammar of any Ancient North Arabian corpus, making it an important contribution to the fields of Arabic and Semitic studies. The volume covers topics in script and orthography, phonology, morphology, and syntax, and contains an appendix of over 500 inscriptions and an annotated dictionary. The grammar is based on a corpus of 33,000 Safaitic inscriptions.
 

Contents

Chapter 1 Introduction
1
Chapter 2 Script and Orthography
26
Chapter 3 Phonology and Phonetics
39
Chapter 4 Nominal Morphology
55
Chapter 5 The Verb
101
Chapter 6 Adjectives and Agreement
138
Chapter 7 Prepositions
144
Chapter 8 Adverbs
154
Chapter 15 Topicalization
180
Chapter 16 Syntax of the Infinitive
182
Chapter 17 Relative and Subordinate Clauses
187
Chapter 18 Circumstantial Clauses
193
Chapter 19 Coordination
195
Chapter 20 Conditional Clauses
197
Chapter 21 Other Constructions
199
Chapter 22 Compositional Formulae
201

Chapter 9 Vocative Particles
158
Chapter 10 Other Particles
160
Chapter 11 Conjunctions
162
Chapter 12 Verbless Clauses
166
Chapter 13 Verbal Clauses
171
Chapter 14 The Syntax of Adverbs
177
Chapter 23 Appendix of Inscriptions
221
Chapter 24 Dictionary
296
Plates
357
Bibliography
360
Index of Tribes
363
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About the author (2015)

Ahmad Al-Jallad, Ph.D. (2012) Harvard University, is an Assistant Professor at Leiden University. He has published on the comparative grammar of the Semitic languages, the history of Arabic, and on the epigraphy of Ancient North Arabia.

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